Prevalence of Municipal-Level Policies Dedicated to Transportation That Consider Food Access

Local governments can address access to healthy food and transportation through policy and planning. This study is the first to examine municipal-level transportation supports for food access. We used a nationally representative sample of US municipalities with 1,000 or more persons from the 2014 Na...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Preventing chronic disease 2021-11, Vol.18, p.E97, Article 210193
Main Authors: Dumas, Brianna L, Harris, Diane M, McMahon, Jean M, Daymude, Thomas J, Warnock, Amy Lowry, Moore, Latetia V, Onufrak, Stephen J
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Agriculture
Census
Community
Diet, Healthy
Eating behavior
Farmers markets
Food
Food security
Grocery stores
Health care
Hispanic Americans
Humans
Local government
Low income groups
Minority & ethnic groups
Nutrition
Obesity
Original Research
Policy
Policy and planning
Population
Population distribution
Population number
Poverty
Prevalence
Public health
Public transportation
Retail stores
Rural areas
Supermarkets
Transportation
Transportation planning
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Summary:Local governments can address access to healthy food and transportation through policy and planning. This study is the first to examine municipal-level transportation supports for food access. We used a nationally representative sample of US municipalities with 1,000 or more persons from the 2014 National Survey of Community-Based Policy and Environmental Supports for Healthy Eating and Active Living (N = 2,029) to assess 3 outcomes: public transit availability, consideration of food access in transportation planning, and presence of demand-responsive transportation (DRT). We used χ tests to compare prevalences by municipal characteristics including population size, rurality, census region, median educational attainment, poverty prevalence, racial and ethnic population distribution, and low-income low-access to food (LILA) status. Among municipalities, 33.7% reported no public transit and 14.8% reported having DRT. Both public transit and DRT differed by population size (both P < .001) and census region (both P < .001) and were least commonly reported among municipalities with populations less than 2,500 (46.9% without public transit; 6.6% with DRT) and in the South (40.0% without public transit; 11.1% with DRT). Of those with public transit, 33.8% considered food access in transportation planning; this was more common with greater population size (55.9% among municipalities of ≥50,000 persons vs 16.8% among municipalities of
ISSN:1545-1151
1545-1151
DOI:10.5888/pcd18.210193